Taking A Rational Approach to the Era of Misdemeanors

In the face of the trend of “double decreases and double increases” in China’s crime data,some scholars have asserted that “the era of misdemeanors has arrived”.However,the actual situation of the era of misdemeanors in China is that the traditional crime governance model centered on punishment has not yet been fundamentally changed,and the legislature attempts to achieve social governance objectives by continuously increasing the number of misdemeanor offenses,while the judiciary has also failed to effectively limit the scope of criminal punishment,which has resulted in a significant pressure on China’s criminal justice resources and has led to a series of problems related to misdemeanor convictions.This indicates that the era of misdemeanors is only a summarized term of the changes in China’s criminal structure,and does not really mark China’s entry into a new stage of crime governance centered on lenient punishment.In view of this,China should promptly adjust the concept of crime governance to adapt to the reality of the accelerated divergence between misdemeanors and felonies,exercise prudence in creating new misdemeanor offenses at the legislative level,explore a mechanism of limiting the initiation of criminal punishment at the judicial level,and speed up the construction of a system of sealing criminal records of misdemeanors.